Trust Me, Help Me, Love Me
by Zip Goes A Million
Summary: Sybil x Tom Romance Week 2017, Day 4: Romantic Suspense. Sybil Crawley is a siren. She wants to live her life as a human. On the day she plans to escape she comes across a human man by the name of Tom Branson. Will he help her escape her siren colony or will he out her to the rest of the world?


_Day four of Sybil x Tom Romance Week! I've had this idea since 2014, but I was never really sure how to write it properly. Although this is a one-shot, I feel like there's so much more to this story, so I might make a sequel to it or make it a multi-chapter in the future. But for now, I hope you enjoy it as it is._

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 **Trust Me, Help Me, Love Me**

The Crawley siren colony was one of the most renowned in the Atlantic Ocean. They made their home off the west coast of Ireland, where they lured humans to their rocky deaths.

Head of the Crawley colony was Robert Crawley. He managed and led the colony on their daily tasks. All sirens within the colony were answerable to him.

Not that that ever stopped Sybil.

Sybil Crawley was Robert's daughter, the youngest of three. She hated the prospect that her destiny was to effectively murder humans from afar, and she made that hatred known. She had been a handful since she was tiny, and everyone knew to keep an eye on her. She was headstrong and very much knew her own mind. Unfortunately for Robert, she didn't respond well to his authority.

He blamed that on her human genes.

Quarter of a century previously, Robert found himself falling in love with a human. Her name was Cora, and she was so hopelessly in love with him that she, on a whim (one that she never regretted), spent 24 uninterrupted hours in the water with Robert, causing her to develop a tail. In water, she was a siren, on land, she was human. She and Robert had three children, all of whom were half human and half siren. Like Cora, they could change between their siren and human forms, but like Robert, they had the powers of a siren. They could change the properties of water and could lure humans with their song. These things they could do either in their siren form or their human form.

Now Mary, Robert's oldest daughter, Edith, his second, and Sybil, his last, were able to control their powers well enough to transform between siren and human form at will. Sybil spent most of her time in human form, much to her father's dismay, whilst Mary and Edith very rarely took the chance to transform into humans.

Sybil had never understood why they would choose to be sirens, when they had the option to be human. Why would anyone want to lure humans to their deaths? How could anybody harbour the guilt? What pleasure could anyone gain from it?

At twenty one years old, it was tradition that girls would start luring. They would be trained to sing from early childhood and on their twenty first birthday would make their luring debut.

Sybil didn't want to lure. She had made a plan to escape the colony and re-invent her life on land, however hard that may be. Her mother had been born human and had lived twenty five years on land. If Cora could do it, what was stopping Sybil from following in her footsteps and doing the same?

-ooo-

Sybil swam to the edge of the small pool on the outskirts of their territory and looked over the ocean where she could see the rest of her family going about their daily business in the evening light. She'd miss it, there was no denying that. Maybe one day she would come back to be with her family, but right now all she wanted was to escape. To live on land and fit in with the other humans.

"Oh my God!" a man shouted behind Sybil.

Where did he come from? Sybil didn't even notice him arrive. How did he even get down there? There hadn't been any reported humans in the colony's territory since Cora developed her tail and no one for fifty years prior to that. Sybil immediately turned her tail into legs. She was wearing a purple floaty dress, which moved with the wind when she stood up and faced the man.

"You're a mermaid! You had a tail! Where's it gone?" he stuttered, unable to believe what he had just seen.

"I'm a siren," Sybil said quietly, hoping desperately that she wasn't drawing attention from her family. If this strange man was any louder, she'd be found out, he would be lured, and she wouldn't be able to carry out her escape plan. "I'm not a mermaid. Mermaids don't exist."

"But you had a tail," he managed.

"Yes. I'm half siren, half human. I can transform at will," Sybil explained. She knew that it was risky telling a human that sirens exist. That she was a monster. That she had magical powers. But if she was going to make it in the human world, she would need a guide. This man had seen her with his own eyes. Sybil might as well make the most of him while he was there.

"Am I dead?" the man asked.

"What's your name?" Sybil asked impatiently.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" he said again.

"No, you're very much alive," Sybil sighed. "What's your name?" she repeated.

"Tom," he said, stunned. "Tom Branson."

"Nice to meet you," Sybil said, extending her hand out to him. "I'm Sybil Crawley."

"What in the name of Jesus is going on?" Tom asked, ignoring Sybil's offer of a handshake, bewildered by the whole situation.

Sybil sighed. "I'm half siren and half human. Today is my twenty first birthday. I'm due to make my luring debut, but I don't want to lure anyone, so I'm running away to live the rest of my life on land. I'd appreciate your help, actually."

"My help? You want my help for you to escape your family? Let me get this straight, you are a siren, I am a human, and you want my help?"

"Yes," Sybil said, crossing her arms.

"What's in it for me?" Tom asked, surprising himself by how willing he was to help. He was in the presence of a mythical creature, yet he was surprisingly relaxed. Why should he help her when to all intents and purposes, she didn't exist? What the hell was happening?

"You won't get lured if you help me," Sybil said. "They'll start singing at seven sharp. You'll get lured and you'll die. If you help me, we can get far enough away that we won't be in hearing range, so you'll live."

"And how do I know that you won't lure me on land? How can I trust you? You're half fish!"

"When I'm in human form I don't have luring powers," Sybil said. "There's no way to prove it. You'll just have to trust me on that one."

"Trust you?" he laughed. "You want me to trust you? You're a fish! A mythical creature!"

"I'm not mythical," Sybil said, "in case you hadn't noticed. I'm as real as you are."

"And you need my help?"

"Yes. When they start singing they'll wonder where I am. If I get far enough away, they won't be able to track me down. I need your help to get away."

"Have you been on land before?" he asked.

"Plenty of times. I spend more time on land than in the water," she explained. "But I've never been away for more than a day. I'm always back in time to watch the others lure."

"You watch them lure?" he asked, astonished.

"I have to. It's kind of a rule. Kind of a lesson, I suppose. If you're not old enough to lure, you have to watch everyone else lure to help you learn how it's done, so that when you're old enough, you're not completely clueless the first time you have to do it." Sybil paused. "What time is it?" she asked, noticing that Tom was wearing a watch.

"Um," he said, not expecting to be asked such a normal, such a human question. He looked at his watch. "Twenty to seven."

"I've got twenty minutes," Sybil said, "to get as far away as possible. Please help me. I need a quick way of getting away from here."

"I've got a car," Tom said. "I could drive you somewhere."

"Would you?" Sybil asked. "I'd be forever grateful."

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. "It's a big step, leaving your family behind and changing your whole life."

"Sometimes a hard sacrifice must be made for a future that's worth having," Sybil said gently.

Tom nodded subtly. "Right, come with me. We haven't got much time."

Sybil followed Tom to his car. What was her plan? She didn't really have one. She didn't know where she would stay or how she would live. She didn't know how she would afford clothes or food or accommodation, but she hoped everything would fall into place. She hoped she'd manage. She hoped that she would never have to go back to her colony. Not permanently. Never again. She was going to start a new life, no matter how hard it would be. She would manage. She would survive. She would make a new, better life for herself. She wanted freedom and Tom Branson was her ticket.


End file.
